


All is Well

by Masu_Trout



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Dark, Diplomacy, Empress!Feferi, Gen, Interstellar trade, Non-Sgrub AU, PEACE AND LOVE
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-25
Updated: 2013-05-25
Packaged: 2017-12-12 21:57:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/816501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Masu_Trout/pseuds/Masu_Trout
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All of Alternia agrees: Feferi is the best Empress they have ever had.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All is Well

All of Alternia agrees: Feferi is the best Empress they have ever had.

She tries to deny it, of course, because it wouldn't be very humble to do otherwise, and humility is an important quality in a leader! Privately, though, she sort of agrees. The previous Empress, and the one before her and before and before her ruled with an iron fist, murdering and subjugating and conquering every planet they could get their fins on. 

Feferi is not doing any such thing. Feferi is ruling with love.

Her attendant, a blueblood with slender horns and a crooked smile, bows deep as he leads the way into her ship. It feels a bit silly, really—she's been through space more times than she can count by now, and she can certainly find her own way to the control room—but this _is_ Alternia. Just because her subjects have let go of her people's more violent traditions doesn't mean they're any less concerned about ceremony. 

Sollux is waiting for her when she arrives and settles onto her throne; he is the best pilot in her fleet, and even if he weren't she would never dream of flying in anyone else's ship-- Sollux is her best friend, and she can't even imagine abandoning him in such a way. 

He looks a little tired, she thinks worriedly. His eyes are drooping half-closed and there is a thin line of mustard-yellow spittle running down his chin. Probably their travel schedule is getting to him, though of course he's far too proud to admit such a thing; Feferi knows she's been rather tired by all the trips she's had to make lately, and it's much more taxing for him than it is for her. 

Feferi extends one long tendril of hair to wipe his face, then lets it slowly caress his cheek. She is careful to be gentle, especially after what happened last time; It took weeks to get the violet stickiness out of her hair.(And far longer than that for h̩̬̬̆ͨe͈ͫ̒̅ͪ̒r̦̬͍̦̳̙͠ to dull the pain, sweep it away and bundle it up until Feferi could hardly even tell it was there anymore. Too long.)

“I'm sorry,” Feferi says cheerfully to Sollux, snapping herself back into reality. No use getting into a funk, right? “We'll be back reely soon, and then you can rest, okay? I promise!” 

Sollux only sighs in return. She can't help but giggle a little at that—he's such a crabbycake, sometimes.

Another of her attendants, an older troll with a broken horn and a missing fang, sticks her head cautiously into the throne room. 

“A-are you ready to depart, Grand Leader?”

She was an attendant for the previous Empress, before, and she still moves like she expects a trident through the ribcage at any moment. It's a sorry thing to watch, like a woofbeast that's been kicked so long it doesn't know what a kind hand feels like. Sometimes it upsets Feferi, seeing the scars her predecessors have left behind, or at least it does until sͤͩ̄ͯ̋̑͡h͔̱̻̳̉͆̋̌e̟̘͓̤ͪ̇͒̅ ̄ͪ̾̃ͣ̑makes it better. 

S̻͍h̢̳̪͔̭̅ͭ͒̇̚e̙̼̫͍͇̓̄'ͬͨ̐͟s̳̹̙̩̈̆ͮ͞ not going to be coming with Feferi on this trip, though, which is a bit of an uncomfortable thought. What if she does something clumsy again and someone gets hurt? What if the planet they are going to is too full of violence? What if the sick awful sadness seeps in again like tar oozing between the flaps of her think pan until it gums and clots and she can't _move_ and can't _breathe_ and can't even lift her head for the weight of all things she's done to everyone she cared about—

A force brushes through her head, alien and yet soothing, gathering all her sorrows and tucking them away into corners where Feferi doesn't have to see them anymore. Long tendrils, white and cold and older than anything Feferi has ever known tangle themselves into her thoughts, chasing everything out except a deep, wonderful sense of _peace_.

Feferi takes a deep breath, whispers, “Thank you,” to the open air. It's all right, of course. Everything's all right. She'll just have to make the trip fast, so that nothing can keep her away from Alternia for too long.

“Yes!” she chirps happily to her attendant. (Her shyness is so adorable. Feferi doesn't understand why it ever bothered her.) “Let's get going!”

The attendant nods and relays the orders. Sollux strains, energy gathering around his eyes, and their ship begins to gain altitude. The rest of her fleet's ships follow behind, though none of their pilots can hope to match his speed.

And Feferi lets her mind brush against h̡͌͐͋ͦ͌̈ͣĕ̂҉̯͕r͙͓̟ͨ̋̔̿̂s̬͓̠̦̱̦̲͗ with the mental equivalent of a smile. _I'll be back soon!_ she thinks, and then they are off.

\---

The planet they are targeting this time is small and unassuming, home to some odd species that Alternia has never dealt with before. Feferi is trying to read up on what they expect to find when they touch down, like any good leader should, but the lack of information is rather annoying. They know that the native species is biologically rather similar to trolls, though they lack horns and seem to be much more tolerant of sunlight. There is a history of violence on the planet-- not so terrible as Alternia before Feferi, but nothing compared to the peace she rules with now. And, most importantly, this planet's oceans overflow with salt, a substance the Alternian Empire has been forced to ration for quite some time.

The previous Empress would have swooped down in a storm of fire, razed the planet to the ground, then filtered the salt from its oceans and left the dry corpse of the world as a warning to those who might oppose her. Feferi's plan is to bring them peace and interstellar trade; she will work with them as equals, rather than viewing them as nothing more than insects to be squashed. It's certainly more difficult than the violent option, but aren't most things?

This world is farther out than Feferi normally travels, but with Sollux's skill they arrive in a very prompt manner. Most of Feferi's fleet is still a ways out, but that doesn't matter much-- they're little more than a formality and a way to bring their cargo home. The diplomacy is something Feferi can handle on her own.

There is already a crowd gathered when Feferi's ship lands, aliens in dark clothes huddled behind strange hulking shapes and clutching cylinders in her hands. At first she doesn't understand what they are meant to be. She nearly laughs aloud when it finally hits her: they're meant to be some sort of weapon! The design is so quaint she almost didn't recognize them. They've probably never been in contact with another species before, she realizes, and so they have no idea what to expect. She's glad she's here to make a good first impression.

Everyone is tense as she walks out of her ship: her attendants quake with nervous anticipation as they follow a few steps behind, and the aliens shiver with what she can only assume is fear of the unknown. She can almost taste it on the back of her tongue, sharp and acrid. 

One of the pale aliens steps forward, arms raised in a careful gesture. It says something, and Feferi pauses to give her translator time to make sense of the entirely new language. When it finally decodes the alien's speech, what is says is this: “Hello. Welcome to planet Earth. What is it you have come here for?” The friendly words are somewhat offset by the being's terror-struck tone of voice. 

Feferi smiles widely. (Then, when she sees several aliens flinch at the sight of her fangs, smiles slightly less widely.)

“We are here for peace, and for trade. We wish you no harm.” She pauses for a moment to let her translator do the work, and soon it calls her message out to the aliens in their own soft language. (So hissy, and with so many vowels. It's a marvel they can communicate anything with it.) The aliens visibly relax at that, though they still hold onto their weapons, and she takes advantage of the somewhat less volatile atmosphere to motion one of the aliens forward. It follows her request, though she can see the way its eyes widen nervously.

She doesn't put her hands on its head---she learned a while back that such a thing only made others nervous. Instead, she just _reaches_ , feeling for the aliens mind with her own, bridging the gap between their consciousnesses.

She had expected difficulty getting into its head. It's normal for her to have a little more trouble with other species, given how differently both the physical and mental parts of their brains often are. But this creature's brain is simple, clear. Like somewhere she'd known before, a long, long time ago.

He (for she can see the difference between the males and females of their species now) is full of worries and fears and losses, sadness and hopeless bits that had dug into his being and never let go. Feferi smooths them all over as she takes in the shape of his mind, leaving behind only the impression of _peace_ and _joy_. She sees his transgressions and forgives them. She takes every negative thing and pulls it away, just like s̘̑̂ͫ̂̑̏͒̕h̵̠̫̹̦͕͚̄̏ͦ̽͒ͪͤͅe̞͗̂́ͮ had taught her so long ago. It's an amazing feeling, pure and uncomplicated, the simple happiness of connecting with someone so intimately that she forgets the difference between _me_ and _him_. Feferi loves this moment more than anything.

Normally, she would never get so far, never dig so deep. Normally she'd have stopped herself by now. But the alien's mind is _home_ in a way even trolls don't often feel to her, and so it is only when she hears the _snap_ and sees the darkness rushing around her before she is thrown back into the physical world that she realizes she has done something terribly wrong.

The alien collapses in front of her. There is red coming out of his nose and mouth and eyes and pores and grey dribbling softly out of his ear canals. For a long moment nobody moves.

Then, as one, the humans pull out their weapons and fire at Feferi.

Feferi has time for only a moment of panic before her survival instincts kick in. She pulls her hair around her with reflexes quicker than any other troll could manage, and most of the bullets get lost in its cloud of tendrils. One bullet glances off the side of her horn, leaving a slight chip. Another grazes one of her ankles where she hadn't quite managed to cover herself in time, drawing a thin line of fuchsia.

A third, just slightly off trajectory, buries itself between the eyes of the assistant with broken horn and missing fang and kicked-woofbeast personality.

_NO_ , Feferi thinks, like that could somehow stop it, like if she just wished hard enough she could turn back time and erase the green that was bubbling up around the wound like some sort of bizarre flower. 

It isn't fair. She liked that attendant. She wanted to make her smile, and to see how good she could be at her job if only she'd gained a little more confidence. The aliens have hurt something of hers. 

Everyone around her has gone still, the calm before the storm. She can see the aliens preparing for another attack, the strange bulky machines pointing in her direction.

Feferi smiles again, deliberately. This time she uses every single one of her teeth.

 ---

By the time she gets back onto the ship, she is covered in red. It mats her hair together, dries under her nails, and coats her tongue with the sticky taste of copper. 

It reminds her of something.

Sollux is more active now, thrashing against his bonds and making odd little crying noises. He is drooling again, except this time the drool is dribbling out from his eyes and his nostrils and his ears and his pores instead of just his mouth. Feferi doesn't understand how that can happen. She feels like there are a lot of things she can't understand right now, like some crucial link that held her brain together has become unwired and now there are only the pieces of her rattling around in empty space.

She has never felt so alone.

Feferi ignores her throne and instead sits down next to Sollux, cradling him with her webbed hands.

“Take me home,” she whispers. Her voice sounds hoarse. “Take me home take me home take me _home_.” 

She doesn't care where her assistants have gone. She doesn't care if they ever get the salt they need. Right now she only cares about making it back to Alternia as fast as she possibly can, because the places in her brain where s͎̲͂h̓e̢̱͖̺̱̭̳͙ slid the bad things away are cracking and everything is seeping back in. It hurts.

She needs h̨ȩ̞̲̳̙̗̩̟̽̿̏͗ͫr̺͎̥͕̭̺͛ͭ͂ͯͩ̎̇́ help.

Sollux whimpers and tries to twist away when the points of her claws pierce his skin, drawing small drops of mustard, but she can feel the acceleration around them that means he has listened to her. Good.

The blood reminds her of Karkat, she realizes. She doesn't know why the connection didn't hit her earlier. (She doesn't even know how long it's been since she last thought of him. Sweeps, probably. But how many?) It's strange to think she could have forgot about her old friend so easily.

(He'd been talking to her, she remembers, saying things she couldn't understand or maybe just didn't want to hear. “This isn't peace,” he'd said, and “Can't you see you're being manipulated?” And then, later, “Feferi oh god oh god please stop no no no no,” when she'd grown angry with him and tired of what he was saying.)

His blood had been just this shade. She remembers that had surprised her. She'd never seen blood like his before. It had left a terrible stain on the tile.

That hadn't been the first time s͕̹̽̏̍h̢̤͚͈͎̗̫̣e̬̺͍̣̰̺ͅ had taken out Feferi's sorrow. But it had been the first time it _hurt_ when s̪̔̌̈ͪ̉̆͡h̵͇̤͍͎͚͓͒ë̖̞̃͗̄͋ did it. Like something was being ripped away instead of just smoothed over. 

Perhaps that was important. It hardly matters any more.

This isn't something she wants to remember, but she can't quite seem to forget anymore. 

“Sollux,” Feferi says very, very softly, “Faster.”

She needs to get home. G͉͇̜̪͍̬̬ͩ̋̓͆ͬl̹̰̬͔̬͒ͩͨ͛ͅ'̱̟̲̤̦͇ͦ̒̆b̴ͭ̋̅̍̋ͥ̿ģ̦̥̜̫̭̘̈́̽͛͗ͧo̞̝͉̼͍̜̟ͩ̈̀̽ͦ͋l͔̬͔̹y͍ͬ̆̓͋̑ͥͮͅb̢͕̣̣̫͍͉͒ will know how to fix her.

G̵̢̮̭͚̥̱̘̪̯̬͈̜̘̯̪̽̓̉ͯͤ͐͑̓̐̽̊͆ͮ͗̏͝ͅl̶̡̙̳̰͉͓͖̯̼̥̮͍͇͇͕̰͖̹ͮ́ͬͬ̎̈́̌̀̀̌ͧͫ̀́͝ͅ'̡̦̮̳̦͇͍̞̘̜̤͕̰̼̅͂̾̆̽͂̒̔̐̆̾ͪ̚b̸̢̭͉͓̦̠̙̙̦̹̜̜̗͉̎ͮͫ̐̅̃̍͐̽ͩ͝͝͡ͅg̸͚̭̝̈́̑ͭ̇̊ͬ̅̀̊ͧ̊͛ͤ̐͂̋̈̕͞͠ơ̧̼̟̰͍͓̒̀̍̈̋͑́̓̏ͮ͑̄ͦ̈́̑̚͢͢ľ̼͙̮̞̪̳͋̀ͥ̀ͨ̀̄͆̏ͫ͌̆̿͆̌ͪͦ̌̕͜ͅy̧̛͓̝͉̼͓͕̦̖̠̤ͫͩ̑̑̉͌͋͘b͋̿͆̓̉ͭ̽̃͝҉̨҉̝̖̞̜͈̲̣̖̤̤̲͟ always does.

**Author's Note:**

> Optimism is the madness of insisting that all is well when we are miserable.  
> -Voltaire


End file.
